Just because your garden is green in colour doesn’t mean it’s green in practicality. A garden in the modern world should be more than just aesthetically pleasing and part of your list of hobbies. It should have a great sense of function and giving back to you and the world. It’s a reasonably large space, and even the average garden can do many useful and technologically advanced things.
Gardening plays a unique role in the changing world that demands you do more with less to help save the environment. Perhaps in previous decades the most you could do is separate your plastics from waste, but now, a garden plays a pivotal role in climate change.
You can also help the local wildlife by providing a range of habitats right outside your back door, by allowing so-called pests to become useful to you needs.
Insects as pesticides
You should attract friendly bugs, such as ladybird and ground beetles into your garden. While there are plenty of bugs in the soil, on the flowers and plants, the bottom line is not all of them are friendly.
Insects like green flies can be harmful to your plants, and they can multiply very rapidly if left alone to do so. Ladybirds eat aphids like the greenfly and also the blackfly. If you have an aphid infestation, they can quickly munch through a patch of your flowers, eventually killing them.
Flowers are needed for the bees that transfer pollen and fertilize other flowers, and bees are needed to feed the birds. It’s a game of upkeeping the ecosystem.
Harnessing free energy
If you have a swimming pool, you may be spending a small fortune every year trying to heat it up. Outdated systems cost a lot and don’t provide efficient heating to large quantities of water, making each attempt a time-consuming affair. With the power of evacuated tube solar thermal hot water systems, you can swap your old generator for a solar pool heater.
Evacuated tubes are the most efficient of all the solar panel technology because it converts up to 90% of the sun’s energy into useable electricity. Taking up very minimal space, the solar pool heater can be situated anywhere in the garden in order to get the maximum amount of sun ray exposure. You can also put this technology on your roof.
Minimize wasting water
If you’ve got a lot of foliage surrounding the borders of your garden, but you’ve planted flowers at the edges, supplying growing needs is important. However, typical foliage will spread out as far as it can to have more surface area open to the sunshine so plants can go through the process of photosynthesis; i.e. making their own food.
Rather than standing back a spraying the area, ditch the hose, and grab a watering can. Only give the plants you want, the water rather than leaving water on the surface of the surrounding plants.
Additionally, poke holes in the pots in which you have planted the flowers, so the water doesn’t overflow and lead out onto the surface of the soil. The deeper the water penetrates, the better access the roots will have to absorb as much water as possible.
Consider investing in a [amazon_textlink asin=’B0045F2E96′ text=’water butt’ template=’ProductLink’ store=’mygardening411-21′ marketplace=’UK’ link_id=’3696a775-7212-11e7-83ca-ef8da3e1e07b’] to collect rainwater, which will cut down on your water bills.
